1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a switching system, and more particularly to an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switching apparatus and method thereof.
2. Description of the Conventional Art
Generally, an ATM switch which asynchronously transfers various kinds of information has an advantage in which an information transfer speed is considerably fast, as compared with that of a conventional synchronous transfer mode. Accordingly, recently the study of applying the ATM switch to a broadband integrated service digital network(ISDN) has been proceeded, and accordingly standardization of various interfaces has become a new trend.
However, to promote high-speed information transmission, ATM networks have to be replaced for all of the networks which have been already equipped, which requires an immense expense.
Accordingly, it has been suggested that the time division multiplexing(TDM) network and the ATM network have to be utilized side by side. However, since a technique which interfaces the TDM network with the ATM network has not yet been developed, it is hard to establish a high-speed information network.
An object of the present invention is to provide an ATM switching apparatus and method thereof for a switch system which mutually operates a TDM network and an ATM network.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an ATM switching apparatus and method thereof which receives more trunks as many as possible in an identical data conversion speed.
To achieve these and other advantages and in accordance with the objects of the present invention, an ATM switching apparatus includes: a plurality of trunk connection units connected with a TDM network: an ATM connection unit connected with an ATM network: and an ATM cell converting unit for converting trunk data which are inputted through the trunk connection units to an ATM cell and outputting the ATM cell to the ATM connection unit, and also converting an ATM cell which is inputted through the ATM connection unit to trunk data and outputting the trunk data to the trunk connection units.
In addition, in order to achieve the above objects of the present invention, there is provided an ATM switching method, including the steps of: initializing operation for setting a link table, a cell buffer control table and a cell header table provided in a memory unit; reading a cell buffer number by accessing the link table in the memory unit in accordance with a trunk number and a time slot number which are supplied from a status/timing signal generating unit; reading a write segment bit, a write pointer and an effective payload length from the cell buffer control table by using the cell buffer number which have been read in the previous step; completing a cell payload by writing multiplexed trunk data in a corresponding cell buffer until the write pointer and the effective payload length which have been read have an identical value; writing a corresponding cell buffer number in a queue when the cell payload is completed; reading a number of the cell buffer in which the cell payload is completed from the queue and reading a corresponding cell header from the cell header table on the basis of the cell buffer number which has been read; and transmitting the cell header and the completed cell payload over a first-in first-out (FIFO) to an ATM switch system.
It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and explanatory and are intended to provide and further explanation of the invention as claimed.